Juventus beat Lazio 3-1 on Saturday in Matchday 26 of the Italian Football League.
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LJuventus Turin, with Cristiano Ronaldo spared and come into play in the second half, consolidated his third place by winning at home against Lazio Rome (3-1), Saturday night during the 26th day of the Italian championship.
This seventh straight home victory in Serie A allows Juve (52 pts) to temporarily return to one point from AC Milan (2nd, 53 pts), which moves Sunday to Hellas Verona (8th) .
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Juventus also have one game less, which they will play in Napoli (6th) on March 17. Lazio (7th) also has a late match to play, Torino not having traveled to Rome last Tuesday during the previous day, due to cases of Covid-19 within its workforce.
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For its part, Inter Milan, solid leader (59 pts), will host Atalanta Bergamo (4th, 49 pts) on Monday during the big poster of this day.
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Turin coach Andrea Pirlo had chosen to leave his star Cristiano Ronaldo on the bench at kick-off, in order to spare him for the return match of the knockout stages of the Champions League against FC Porto on Tuesday in Turin ( 2-1 loss in the first leg).
The Romans, well in place and enterprising from the kick-off, opened the scoring quite logically in the 14th minute through Joaquin Correa. The Argentinian intercepted a failed pass through Sweden’s Dejan Kulusevski to beat Polish goalkeeper Juve Wojciech Szczesny with a low cross shot after eliminating Turkish center-back Merih Demiral.
Doubled by Morata
But little by little Juve gained momentum and in the 38th minute the Spanish striker Alvaro Morata almost equalized, but his head uncrossed on a free kick shot from the left by Federico Bernardeschi came very close to the goal of Pepe Reina.
The next opportunity was the right one: alerted by Morata in the Roman penalty area, Adrien Rabiot deceived Reina with a strong strike under the bar (39th).
On resumption, Juve striker Federico Chiesa made a good number of dribbles in the area, but his shot was deflected for a corner by Reina (50 ‘).
In response, Serbian Lazio midfielder Sergej Milinkovic-Savic placed a header (52nd) on the crossbar of Szczesny’s goal two minutes later.
More and more master of the game, combining well, Juventus finally made the difference in three minutes, with a brace from their Spanish striker Alvaro Morata.
The former player of Real, Chelsea and Atlético Madrid first scored with a nice strike from the left in the top corner, concluding a quick counter-attack initiated by Chiesa (57th).
Then the Spaniard scored in the wake of his seventh goal of the season in the league by transforming a whistled penalty for a foul by Milinkovic-Savic on the Welshman Aaron Ramsey (60th).
Morata was then replaced in the 69th minute by “serial goalscorer” Cristiano Ronaldo, who had neither the time nor the opportunity to score his 21st Serie A goal of the season.
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